Getting New York City to Believe in Government

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK – It was the first Rental Ripoff hearing and people were pissed. Set up by Mayor Zohran Mamdani and attended by leaders of his administration and 150 city workers across multiple departments, the hearings gave tenants a chance to describe conditions their landlords refuse to fix—rats, mold, dangerous construction—along with a spate of unnecessary and hidden fees. They had three minutes each to share their experiences. But they also got to do something unexpected: set policy priorities for one of the largest cities in the world.

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Arrayed around the room were posterboards, which not only asked tenants what problems they faced but sought their input on policy proposals brainstormed by staff, like fining landlords who don’t make repairs, making it easier to form tenant unions, or enabling the city to take over buildings when there are serial violations. Placing a sticker by the proposal signaled approval. But in addition, the public could also write their own policy alternatives on Post-It notes. And they did.

“Require transparency on who landlords (LLC) are so [we] can hold them accountable,” read one note. Another suggested a crackdown on charging market rates when the unit is rent-stabilized so the landlord could pocket the difference. “Some management companies list vacant apartments and request non-refundable application fees,” a third person wrote. “They make more money on application fees than collecting rent.”

“People came up with interesting ideas!” said Sam Levine, who runs the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP). “For policy development, it’s an interactive process. It’s like nothing I’ve done in my career.”

The last of five Rental Ripoff hearings, one for each borough, was in Staten Island this week. “I’m sad they’re over!” Levine said.

Mamdani came to Gracie Mansion on the strength of mass engagement from his supporters, including the 104,400 volunteers who knocked on doors daily during his campaign. His first hundred days in office end today, and his goals for the period have been twofold: show those supporters meaningful progress on their concerns, and expand participation in New York City democracy even more.

The block and tackle of municipal government, like filling 100,000 potholes in 100 days, has been one of the basic mechanisms of this effort. Mamdani is confronting many of the city’s biggest daily annoyances, by stopping illegal towing, taking down sidewalk sheds, and investing in public bathrooms. “Mamdani is just going down the list of things that have pissed him off while living in NYC and addressing them one by one,” said one X commenter (who, granted, is from Texas).

Yet the initiatives go beyond sewer socialism, though Mamdani has invested $108 million in improving city sewers. Mamdani’s administration spent countless hours during the transition scouring the existing laws of the city—in our interview, Levine held up a fat book of just the DCWP’s rules—to make progress wherever possible. He’s attempted to reposition New York as a place for fair pricing, honest dealing, and scrupulous businesses.

His administration has heavily publicized all this on social media and through interactive promotions, like a jingle contest judged by the Bronx’s own Cardi B to help kick off the historic extension of free child care to two-year-olds. And like the Rental Ripoff hearings, it has brought New Yorkers in to identify problems and be part of the solutions.

“In our 100 days, we have been relentlessly focused on securing real, immediate wins that people can see and feel,” Mamdani told the Prospect. “Trust is built through results. It’s built when a tenant sees accountability for a landlord who thought they were above the law. It’s built when a worker or a small-business owner no longer has to shoulder the burden of exploitative fees or predatory practices.”

This is designed to build momentum for the fights ahead that will be critical to Mamdani’s success. And they also seek to prove the concept of government as a force in people’s lives—not just as something worth supporting, but worth getting involved in.

This is beginning to pay off politically. Mamdani is most popular among young people, a new Marist poll shows, with 60 percent support from New Yorkers ages 18 to 29. Across all ages and party affiliations, his approval rating in the city is 48 percent (other polls have shown that quite a bit higher). But asked if they think he’s working hard, the number skyrockets. Seventy-four percent of New York City residents said yes.

THE MAMDANI CAMPAIGN PLATFORM was so ubiquitous and sound bite–friendly that by Election Day most voters could rattle it off: rent freeze, public grocery stores, fast and free buses, no-cost child care. The ideas were laser-focused on reversing or at least softening the national affordability crisis, and retaining working-class residents at risk of getting priced out. The message resonated enough to give New York City its first democratic socialist mayor since David Dinkins by a comfortable margin.

In the first hundred days, he has made the most progress on child care. Within a week of Mamdani’s inauguration, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul agreed to provide enough funding to make child care free and universal by the end of the mayor’s first term. Building on the universal pre-kindergarten program that Mayor Bill de Blasio established, Mamdani plans to add 2-K and expand 3-K for younger children starting this fall. The first 2,000 free 2-K slots in five school districts will run full-day and year-round, the administration said this week. It also launched a child care pilot inside the Dinkins Municipal Building for city workers.

“To those who think that the promises of a campaign cannot survive once confronted with the realities of government, today is your answer,” Mamdani told reporters at the January announcement.

Progress has been slower on other fronts. A rental freeze for the next four years is up to the Rent Guidelines Board, which the previous mayor Eric Adams unsuccessfully tried to stock with his own appointees. That board, with six members handpicked by Mamdani, began meeting in March to collect testimony from renters and landlords. The economic conditions of both must be taken into account before a final decision is made sometime in May or June. There’s been little talk about the grocery store pilot since the mayor entered office, outside of a stunt by the gambling website backed by President Trump’s son, which set up a “free” grocery store. Mamdani responded with the ClickHole meme: “Heartbreaking: The worst person you know just made a great point.”

Mamdani has also been hobbled by the $5.4 billion budgetary hole Adams left him, a problem that will endure over the next two fiscal years. The stagnant national economic picture, with its continued high inflation, isn’t helping; the city lost nearly 20,000 jobs in 2025. Though these are legacy issues not caused by Mamdani, they have led to persistent calls for “economic development,” which in the minds of the city’s establishment always means tax breaks for corporations rather than creating conditions to attract workers and businesses, like offering free child care.

To deal with the budget gap, let alone promises like free buses, Mamdani identified areas where the city was overpaying for everything from office supplies to consultants from McKinsey, wringing out savings by making government more efficient and less beholden to middlemen. But there’s no ultimate solution without higher taxes or cuts in services. The latter flies in the face of Mamdani’s campaign promises (though he’s identified a few cuts), and tax changes in New York City are mostly contingent on lawmakers in Albany. One of the few things Mamdani can control is local property taxes, which he has said would have to go up significantly if he can’t get Albany to tax the rich and give New York City a fairer share of the money residents already send to the state.

The state legislature submitted a proposal to tax the rich, but Hochul has been reluctant to commit to it, expressing concern about billionaire flight eroding the tax base, a fear that for years has been repeatedly debunked. Meanwhile, City Council Speaker Julie Menin, a relatively centrist Upper East Sider, countered Mamdani’s initial budget proposal with a plan that envisions no new revenues, cuts agency resources, and engages in a variety of gimmicks like double-counting revenue already realized and exaggerating savings, as Mamdani said in a blistering response. “Any proposal that claims we can close this gap without significant new revenue is unrealistic,” he said in the statement.

Waiting in the wings of this two-front fight is Mamdani’s army of supporters and allied groups, including the Democratic Socialists of America and Our Time, a grassroots organization available to call lawmakers, canvass neighborhoods, and push for the mayor’s agenda. So far, they have not done a full-court press on Albany amid negotiations, though they have sent 1,500 tax-the-rich supporters to the Capitol to pressure Hochul. Nor have they strong-armed Menin, though Mamdani’s social media condemnations of the Menin budget response drew a big audience. But the Mamdani base looms over the debate, ready and eager to act.

Preparing the ground for that possibility means keeping the public engaged in the promise of activist government, providing proof that if revenues do arrive, they will be spent well and for the benefit of the broad mass of New Yorkers. That’s where Mamdani’s strategy of delivering early, meaningful results comes in.

SNOWSTORM RESPONSE HAS TRIPPED UP more than one mayor around the country and in New York City. De Blasio was criticized heavily for failing to clear roads during a snowstorm early in his first term in 2014 and deciding not to close schools for a second storm. Winter weather blew in to test Mamdani shortly after his inauguration as well. It was not a uniform success and even led to tragedy: At least 20 unhoused people died during a legendary January deep freeze, with many feeling like not enough was done to protect those on the streets.

But emergency response accelerated over time. Warming shelters and buses were secured for a major storm in February, warm-weather supplies were distributed, and overdose prevention centers were staffed around the clock. One billion pounds of salt was spread across city streets. And a unique Emergency Snow Shoveler program that has expanded fivefold under Mamdani, from 1,500 to 7,800 members, delivered significant manpower to clear the snow. It was another example of participatory democracy, with neighbors helping neighbors through a weather snafu.

Quality-of-life improvements have been an area of focus in the first hundred days. “We should be working as hard as New Yorkers have to work, and move at the speed that New Yorkers move at,” said Julie Su, Joe Biden’s former labor secretary and the deputy mayor for economic justice. “When government delivers on those day-to-day things, they build trust in government.”

That was evident in the way the city took on the Williamsburg Bump, a notorious hazard for bike riders that Mamdani himself has had to navigate. The bike lane on the Williamsburg Bridge crossing the East River had a large concrete wedge sticking out, initially designed to slow riders down as they headed into the pedestrian path along Delancey Street in Manhattan. But it was inducing accidents and consternation. So on Day 6 of his mayoralty, Mamdani took a Citi Bike, rode to the location, picked up a shovel, and assisted in transforming the bump into a ramp.

“In this administration there will be no issue too big for us to take on and no issue too small to focus on,” the mayor said on-site after the repair. “What you have seen in the last few months is countless New Yorkers reaching out, [saying] that they are tired of biking across this bridge, with an anxiety [about] what will happen at the end of it.”

Mamdani has been a chronic presence on street crews, joining them this week to fill the city’s 100,000th pothole since Inauguration Day. This fits with an unusual attention to the ground beneath New Yorkers’ feet, and includes a visit to overnight workers who repair the streets and stand ready for emergencies while the rest of the city sleeps. Mamdani’s office has restarted or initiated several bike lane and bus lane projects, and the city has committed to every eligible school having a slow zone of 15 miles per hour. Criminal enforcement for bike traffic violations has been downgraded to the same civil fines as for motorists. Bike riders and pedestrians will have their own access to the Brooklyn Bridge by June. New scaffolding rules intend to loosen requirements for shed coverage and accelerate repairs on publicly owned buildings, making the city more open and less under construction. And the commitment for public bathrooms, including modular units at a fraction of the usual cost, was announced on Day 10.

Su explained that these changes flowed from the concerns of the everyday people who live and work in New York City rather than from lobbyists for the powerful. “It’s about changing who gets to decide what the city prioritizes, and how we measure whether the city is being successful,” she said. And virtually all of these advancements have been paired with a social media video or other creative announcement, a key part of broadcasting the work the city is doing. Mamdani himself took calls on the city’s 311 response service last month.

“The willingness to put things out there so we can hear if it’s working is really important,” Su said. “So often government happened behind closed doors, with policies dropped on communities instead of built with them. This mayor really believes that if you’re doing the right thing, you should be unafraid to talk about it.”

THAT IS WHY SU, LEVINE, AND MAMDANI found themselves at the Prospect Park Zoo on Wednesday, announcing an $875,000 enforcement action against HungryPanda, a delivery app popular with immigrant-owned Asian restaurants. The app was charging the restaurants over the city’s cap on third-party food delivery service fees, including by mislabeling them as “promotion deductions.” Nearly 400 restaurants will get restitution, along with a fine on HungryPanda for breaking the law.

It was the second time HungryPanda had been fined in the first hundred days; the first was a $5 million settlement for thousands of illegally deactivated delivery workers on several apps. Su said that that enforcement action came directly out of meetings with the Worker’s Justice Project, a community organizing group in the city.

Mamdani has fully backed and promoted these actions as an early show of progress. “New Yorkers have been asked to accept a status quo that doesn’t serve them, where wealthy interests could operate with impunity while working people paid the price. That era is over,” he said. “Our message is straightforward: This city belongs to the people who keep it running.”

Levine, who came from the Federal Trade Commission under Joe Biden, has been encouraged by Mamdani’s direct presence in these and other enforcement announcements. “These lawsuits shouldn’t be confined to blog posts written by law firms,” he said. “I feel I have the mayor’s full backing, with no fear that some lobbyist will cut a side deal.”

Indeed, publicizing the cases is part of the enforcement process itself, Levine explained. “As a law enforcer I feel strongly, we’re never going to be able to sue every company. You need to send a message that if you do break the law and get caught, you will have to pay everyone back and a penalty.” High-profile announcements can help establish a deterrent that keeps every company inside the bounds of the law, in other words.

One of the mayor’s first executive orders took on hidden and deceptive junk fees. A Bronx-area tow operator named Instant Recovery Corp. was sued for overcharges and demands of cash to relinquish vehicles. Tax preparation this year was free throughout the city for anyone earning below the median earnings level, freeing them from the claws of TurboTax and H&R Block. And fast-food workers who were given unfair schedules at Dunkin’ and Taco Bell franchises were given $1.8 million in compensation, with the franchisee paying added fines. The announcement, part of a series of actions that returned $8.5 million in stolen wages, was made while partaking in a fast-food feast.

On the other side, Mamdani has taken significant steps to make life easier for New York’s many small-business owners and entrepreneurs. He directed agencies to take a full inventory of fees imposed on small businesses and work to reduce them. He established a new Office of Street Vendor Services to help with their unique needs.

Su explained that these kinds of measures are part of an economic growth strategy that goes beyond business tax breaks. And she adds cracking down on dishonest businesses while letting honest ones flourish as part of that. “There’s been some sense that if you want the economy to grow you don’t enforce the law,” she said. “We reject that wholesale.”

Much of this push to position government on the side of workers, tenants, consumers, and small business came out of a transition push to scour the city’s rulebook for ways to make progress quickly. Lina Khan, the former Federal Trade Commission chair and a co-chair of Mamdani’s transition team, helped lead that effort. “He’s governing with both real urgency and focus on using the full set of tools and authorities at his disposal,” Khan told the Prospect. “He’s relentlessly focused on tackling concrete pain points in people’s daily lives, and modeling how government can be effective and efficient.”

But the administration has also used existing powers to create new tools. Just yesterday, New York became the first city to propose a “click to cancel” rule to make it as easy to close a subscription as it is to open one. That’s one of the many ways New York City has been enlisted into service as a substitute for the federal government. The FTC under Khan issued a rule making subscription cancellations simpler and eliminating traps in 2023, but it was stymied by legal challenges, and then the Trump administration delayed implementation, allowing it to be killed.

“No city has ever done this,” Levine said. But the DCWP looked at its authorities and found that it could use its ability to prohibit unconscionable practices. “Trapping people in subscriptions is an unconscionable practice, so let’s do it,” he said. When the FTC finalized the rule, it took two years; Mamdani’s administration completed the proposed rule in the first hundred days, and after a 30-day comment period, it will be tweaked based on public feedback and become law.

“We’re moving at the kind of speed that I think people don’t expect from government,” Levine said. “We are charged by this mayor to do so.”

IN THE HOURS AHEAD OF THE LAST Rental Ripoff hearing, Cea Weaver, director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants, reflected on what New Yorkers had told her during Mamdani’s first hundred days.

A nationally recognized tenant organizer and housing advocate, Weaver organized the hearings, which brought together residents and more than a dozen city agencies to provide answers to renters and hear ideas for what more the city could do. She wanted to understand the priorities of renters, who compose 69 percent of the city’s population, rather than just assume them. In addition to the posterboards asking for ideas, there were also ones asking renters to rank which issues were the most important to them. Topping the list were strengthening the ability to lawfully withhold rent to compel landlords to make repairs; more aggressively collecting fines and fees from the worst offenders; making it easier to know when an inspector is coming after a renter calls for help; and combating ICE-related harassment and other forms of landlord retaliation.

Su also cited multiple groups she has engaged directly to hear their ideas for setting policy, including taxi drivers at airports, deliveristas, bodega owners, and more. “There should be pressure on those of us in government to radically rethink what is possible,” she said.

At the first hearing in Brooklyn, one tenant wanted Weaver to fix her issue immediately. When Weaver explained that the hearing was to gather thoughts to inform future policies and offer available city services, the woman sat back in frustration. The mayor and his staff act like activists, she said, but this hearing is “more of the same.”

The interaction reflected one of the struggles Mamdani has faced in his first hundred days, as he creates new ways for New Yorkers to participate in their own government, an idea that politicians at any level rarely put into action. “Some people are certainly expecting a traditional hearing where we’re sitting on the dais and listening, and to me that’s a much less meaningful experience,” Weaver said in an interview. The goal, she said, is to move away from a model where New Yorkers play no part in determining their collective fate. The best way to protect everyone’s rights is to make sure “we are in a fighting posture.”

“I really believe that our broader housing goals to preserve and invest in deeply affordable housing and improve material concerns … will work better if tenants are organized,” Weaver said. A city code inspector can act more swiftly if they have a tenant contact, for example, and the city can take faster legal action if renters in a single building are working together.

City officials like herself can also be more responsive to residents’ needs when they know specifically what those needs are. The hearings highlighted new issues not yet covered by regulation or contemplated in law, such as the shift to electric heat, a major new expense for New Yorkers, who are used to oil- or gas-powered heat that’s included in the cost of rent.

Again and again, Weaver returned to her main points, an aspect of Mamdani’s administration from the beginning of his campaign for mayor. Message discipline is core to all his staff, who bring conversations back to their policy positions, a hallmark of all good organizers.

“I hope that people take away from these hearings that the most protected tenant is an empowered tenant who can talk to their neighbors about their rights,” she said, adding that the philosophy of participation is also reflected in Mamdani’s Office of Mass Engagement, which she called not just a nice-to-have initiative. Greater civic participation and greater equity go hand in hand, a claim that’s backed by years of research.

“The most important thing,” Weaver said, “is that in this administration, Mayor Mamdani is on your side.”